Memorial Days
by
94/99
Critics
92/99
Readers
n/a
Scholars
92/99
Rating
96/99
Volume
85/99
Rating
98/99
Volume
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About This Book
A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse.Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha's Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert's Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied ways those of other cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
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Reviews
"Overwrought metaphors aside, grief is less of an ocean and more of a series of days ..."
"In significant ways, it's more useful and inspiring than some of the others."
"A rich account of marriage and mourning, too literary to be considered a self-help book, Memorial Days nonetheless contains much compassionate advice for those who have, or will, suffer the same ferocious blow."
"Masterfully reveals Brooks as both reporter and fiction writer, marshaling facts and details while probing the ever-motivating miracles of love and loss."
"Brooks toggles between memories of the fitful days and months surrounding Horwitz's death and the solitary mourning ritual she follows on Flinders Island ..."
"I found it almost impossible to read these chapters without experiencing a welling of my own emotions as Brooks recounts her shock and sudden disorientation at being in a world without her partner ..."
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